Car-Free in Ann Arbor

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Batterman's work with the Alliance is focused on lobbying Lansing on regional transit issues. He worked primarily out of the organization's Ypsilanti office before moving to Detroit in December to be closer to the main office in Ferndale. Batterman says his girlfriend usually uses a car for longer-range shopping trips in Ferndale and Detroit, but he recently acquired a folding bicycle easily transported on bus and train trips back to Ann Arbor.

Although cycling is important to Batterman, he says there's "only so much we can do" with biking and walking: mass transit is also key. And he believes that the high cost of car ownership is already starting to turn the tide. "A quotation that I like is Henry Ford's saying that if you asked people what they wanted in 1900, they would have said a faster horse, not a car," he says. "There's an extended process of cultural change that goes into the kind of transportation that we use. But I think it's pretty clear which direction we're heading."